Housing Permits In State Fall For Second Year In Row

Despite an improvement in the economy, state communities for the second straight year issued fewer residential building permits in 1996 than they did the year before.

A total of 7,714 new permits were issued in 1996 -- down 7.1 percent from the 8,307 issued in 1995, the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development reported Tuesday.

Yet one of the few areas of the state that bucked the downward trend was Hartford County, which has been one of the weakest economic areas of the state in the past five years.

Hartford County permits were up 16.8 percent, from 1,485 in 1995 to 1,734 last year.

Economists and home builders point to job security to explain both trends.

``While the job market has improved, what's missing in the Connecticut housing market is a sense of job security,'' said Donald Klepper-Smith of DataCore Partners Inc.

``After all the downsizing, the so- called leaner and meaner companies are starting to move people in, and people who work there are feeling good about things again,'' said Tom Francoline, president of Avonridge Inc., which builds houses in the Farmington Valley.

Those two viewpoints are not necessarily contradictory, both men said. Klepper-Smith, for instance, said that several major corporate shake-ups in the Hartford area in 1995 stymied any improvement in the housing market.

So the improved performance in Hartford County in 1996 may be more the result of regional economic problems in 1995 than evidence of a healthy housing market in central Connecticut, he said.

``What you're talking about is a recovery from a very low, low level,'' Klepper-Smith said.

And Francoline said he was not predicting a boom market.

``We have a real basis, a real feeling that we are going somewhere,'' he said. ``It may be a lot slower than in the past, but we are going to grow.''

Conversely, Fairfield County, which has seen the strongest economic recovery in the state, had the steepest decline in new housing construction of any county in the state in 1996. Fairfield County communities issued 1,667 permits, compared with 2,292 in 1995 -- a 27 percent decline.

``The numbers are topsy-turvy,'' Klepper-Smith said. ``Clearly, housing is lagging the rest of the economy.''

Library note: A graph accompanies this story: "Decade of decline in housing permits." Source: state Department of Economic and Community Development / The Hartford Courant